walnut chair seat panels

At work on my toddler sized rocking chairs, I've arrived at the point of making chair seat panels. The unique design of this chair has floating panel book matched bottoms shaped to fit the curvature of the surrounding parts. So I made a simple jig to use on the router table making certain that all are the same shape to fit the frame. To hold the wood on the jig I routed dovetail shaped grooves first in the plywood base to enable the use of Matchfit dovetail clamps.  This jig will be useful when I teach a class in making these chairs, and there's a lot to do in a five day class. Routing them one on top of the other in pairs helps me to keep the grain aligned.

While these resemble track saw clamps that exert force on the surface of the material in which they are clamped, the force of the dovetail clamp is spread across a wider, and more stable surface with the clamping force going outward as well as up as pressure is increased. 

Make, fix and create...